


Sunset that screens, reveals

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Biblical References, F/M, Fluff, Marriage, Revelations, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 15:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9910163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Henry makes a discovery but it changes nothing.





	

He would still have married her if he had known. Henry knew he could forgive her any crime, any sin against man or God, and that shamed him enough he could not admit it to her—how much he loved her, more than his immortal soul. If she had been cruel or careless, if she had never altered from the day she walked into Mansion House in her lacy white dress, her full skirts brushing against the iron bedsteads, her pretty chin tilted up and those dark blue eyes willful and supercilious unless she was tending to a Reb, if she had let him tumble her in the fields beyond Ayres’ farm or recoiled from his touch, if she had slapped his face when he referred to her as his weakness, he would have loved her yet and never any less than now, when she lay beside him, a hand tucked next to her face, her night plait loose. It had taken a week to notice; their nights had been broken by sanctioned lust and the confidences lovers exchanged, everything revelation—the way she felt beneath him, how bold above him, her hands cupping his face, laid atop his on her hips. She had confessed she’d stolen the money, she’d not trusted him to help her with Belinda, she’d envied widowed Nurse Mary for the darkly charged gaze Dr. Foster gave her until she’d heard the Yankee woman cry for him in her delirium, hopeless and heart-breaking. He told her how poor the farm was and how Mother’s lungs troubled her, how he feared he would not find a parish, how he still dreamt of the murdered man and woke with her name on his lips. She had stroked his brow and moved so his head lay on her breast, the plump curve against the bridge of his nose, and then he had slept.

She woke him but not as she intended. He’d expected to see the steam curling and undulating from the kettle’s spout, the copper belly polished and realized it was Emma, his wife, and that it was her snoring that had drawn him from sleep. It had never occurred to him a woman could be so afflicted, but she was, in such a ladylike and particular way he smiled as he jostled her a little to hear her breath hitch and the noise settle into the night’s quieter symphony. It took another fortnight to become accustomed to the sound and he hadn’t the heart to tell her and face her disbelief, her wrath or her blushing embarrassment. It didn’t make any difference and it wouldn’t, it couldn’t, even if she had sounded like Gabriel’s horn and not Mother’s prized Wagner kettle, announcing the water was ready for tea.

**Author's Note:**

> There was a comment on Tumblr that is was hard to believe there were no stories featuring the Green sisters' snoring. And there is a relative dearth of Emmry fluff, so I tried to satisfy both requests. The title is from Emily Dickinson. Wagner was a German coppersmith company which started in the 16th century and made, among other things, tea-kettles.


End file.
